Show Me A Hero
by Dipenates
Summary: Written for the Summer of Sam love on LJ, a missing scene from 2.06: No Exit. Jo and Sam talk about hunting.


**Show Me A Hero**

___"Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy." - _F. Scott Fitzgerald

She was already dressed and sitting looking at the file when he got up, and he fought down an irrational burst of irritation at the fact that she was sitting there as nice as pie, doing _his_ job.

"Is that coffee?" Sam nodded towards the cup on the table in front of Jo.

"Morning, Sam." Her tone was just the right side of arch, as she smoothed down the blueprints she had unfolded. "It's tea, actually."

He picked his jacket up from where he had slung it over the back of a chair the previous night. "I'll go get some. Dean will need—"

"He doesn't think I can do it, does he?"

"Doesn't think you can do what?" Sam paused, one arm through a jacket sleeve, and it was _way _too early for anything except caffeine and lungfuls of city air.

"Hunt," Jo said, like it was nothing, just one verb among a thousand. Jo picked up her knife. Sam sighed. "I'm the wrong person to be talking to about this."

"Why?" She twirled her knife around her fingers, light catching the blade. "I thought I could rely on a college man to have a shred of respect for women?"

Sam shook his head. "It's not that."

"What then?" There was something he couldn't read in the set of her shoulders, a smudge of doubt in her eyes.

Sam sat down opposite her, scraping his chair against the floor. "It's complicated."

She frowned. "How so?"

Sam felt a bone-deep weariness. "Dean and I, we, uh—" He tried again. "We didn't have the choice not to do this, is what it comes down to."

"Because big, bad John Winchester put you in his Impala and dragged you all over the country?" She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, I've heard the folklore."

"Don't do that," Sam said. "Don't talk about my father like that. Don't talk about my life like that. This isn't some game, Jo."

"You think I don't know that?" She opened her fingers and let her knife fall on the table with a dull thunk. "My father died, remember?"

"I remember." Sam looked at the table and stretched out his back, kneading one of the kinks from his night's sleep.

"And so did yours." She tilted her chin.

"Jo—" He _couldn't _think about it, because the blend of guilt, and anger, and relief that Dean was still _here_ built in his chest until it hurt.

"I'm sorry." She looked down at the papers on the table.

He looked at his hands, threaded his fingers together. "Have you ever thought that maybe your dad didn't want this kind of life for you?"

"I'm not some silly little girl."

He sighed. "Not because you're a girl. Woman." He paused. "Because you're his child. And this life sucks."

That thought burned all by itself, because John Winchester was dead and gone but Sam still wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing dragging two little kids around the country and teaching them to hunt.

"You and Dean do it."

"That doesn't make it suck less." He shook his head. "It's not glamorous, Jo. It's bad food, and shitty motel rooms, and digging up stinking crap so you can salt it and burn it."

_And knocking your brother out with cheap booze so you can stitch his gaping wounds back together. And not having a home, and not having a relationship, and trusting no one, and everyone you love fucking dying._

She wrapped her hands around her mug of tea. "So what am I supposed to do?"

He shrugged. "Whatever you want. Go to school. Move away. Anything."

Her shoulders sagged. "But that's _not _what I want. I want this."

The pang of envy stung, because he would give anything to feel that deep, undeniable tug towards this life. His daddy had been running on the fumes of anger and revenge, but even if his brother never said so in so many words, he knew that Dean _yearned _for this.

He didn't. Hadn't. He had built an escape hatch test score by paper by SAT, until he had his back to hunting and his face towards a different kind of future. And then it had all dissolved that night, burnt up in those flames on the ceiling in a rush of heat and light.

Now he was on an interstate with no exits in sight.

He stood up. "I'll go and get that coffee."


End file.
